Official FIFA World Rankings

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FIFA’s official ranking system for nations was officially introduced in 1992. Initially it was a rather simplistic system, in which a win gave a team 3 points whilst a draw gave the team 1 point. This created a number of problems, based mainly around the fact that it didn’t take into account that some countries continually played weaker nations and as a result would constantly rank higher than more accomplished sides.

After 7 years, FIFA decided to try and rectify this with a new system. In this system teams were awarded up to a maximum of 10 points for a result. The points took into account the following factors:

Goals scored/conceded

Home or Away game

Importance of match / competition

Regional strength

Another change was that losers were now able to win points, as points didn’t necessarily depend on winning, drawing or losing.

Whilst this system addressed some the issues, FIFA felt the need to make more changes so in 2006 the system was changed to what we currently see in use today.

Current FIFA World Rankings Calculation Process:

Since the changes in 2006 the following basic points allocation has been in use: